Topeka ? The U.S. Supreme Court has returned to Kansas appellate courts a case that challenged the state’s differing treatment of sex offenders based on whether their acts involve gay sex.

The Supreme Court’s ruling Friday came a day after its ruling in a Texas case. That ruling invalidated the Kansas statute against consensual sodomy by gay adults, according to Atty. Gen. Phill Kline.

The president of a Florida group critical of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Texas case predicted Kansas would not be able to keep treating offenders differently.

The Kansas case involves Matthew Limon, who is appealing his sentence of more than 17 years under the state’s “Romeo and Juliet” law.

Kansas law makes sex with a child under 16 illegal, no matter what the context. The “Romeo and Juliet” statute lessens the penalties when the partners are four years or less apart in age but it specifically does not apply to same-sex couples.

In 2000, Limon was sentenced to 17 years and two months for having sex with a boy who was nearly 15 when he was 18. Both were residents of the Lakemary Center, a school for developmentally disabled young people in Paola.

Had Limon or the other boy been female, the maximum sentence would have been one year and three months, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which took up his case.

Reversal expected

In February 2002, the Kansas Court of Appeals rejected Limon’s attack on the disparity in sentencing, saying the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to treat gay and heterosexual activity differently something that changed Thursday.

Limon’s case will return to the Kansas Court of Appeals. The nation’s highest court took the action without commenting, other than to note its ruling Thursday.

Mathew Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, an Orlando, Fla., religious rights group, said the U.S. Supreme Court did not always expect a lower court to reverse a ruling when it returned a case. But in Limon’s case, he said, that result should be expected.

“I predict there will be a reversal,” said Staver, whose group was critical of the decision in the Texas case. “I think this is just the beginning.”

Limon, who has spent more than two years in prison, remains in the Ellsworth Correctional Facility, but the ACLU planned to ask the Kansas Court of Appeals to release him, and court spokesman Ron Keefover said a decision could be made quickly.

“We’re obviously very pleased and hopeful that this means Matt Limon gets out of jail,” said James Esseks, director of the Lesbian and Gay Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, said of the U.S. Supreme Court’s action. “He has already served more time than he should.”

Like other critics of the law, Esseks argues it discriminates against people in same-sex relationships. Some critics also had suggested it represented a form of gender discrimination.

But Kansas law long proscribed gay sex, even after the state decriminalized sodomy among consenting adults of different genders. Other states that kept similar prohibitions in effect were Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

A matter of morals?

Defenders of treating Limon differently from someone convicted of having illegal sexual relations under the “Romeo and Juliet” law said that policy reflected longstanding Kansas values.

“That is a philosophical position that the founding fathers took,” said Sen. Kay O’Connor, R-Olathe, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “That was what our nation was founded upon, moral principles based on Judeo-Christian values, the Bible, however you want to describe it.”

Meanwhile, the state’s Roman Catholic bishops issued a statement reaffirming that marriage is “a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between one man and one woman.”

The bishops said they wanted to emphasize the “intrinsic dignity of homosexual persons.”

“Fornication, consensual sex outside of marriage, is a serious sin for all,” the bishops said. “Homosexual persons, just like unmarried heterosexual persons, are called to live chastely with the help of God’s grace. They may enjoy friendships but not sexual intimacy.”